A Walk In A Park

A Walk In A Park / 19.10. - 21.10.05

Gare du Nord, Basel

Dokumentary movie, shot during the festival

SONOgames has been invited to realise an interaktive sound istallation for the season openig 2005/06 of Gare du Nord, Bahnhof für Neue Musik in Basel. It took place during three days at the festival "Espace Sonore".

In all the rooms that were open for the public (staircase, concerthall, vault) we put small loudspeakers from headphones on the ceiling.

With this loudspeakers we divided the rooms up into discrete zones by using hihgfrequent sinusioids. This sinusoids are close to the boundary of human hearing (18000 – 20000 Hertz). Each zone had its own Frequency, 18000, 18200, 18400 ... 19400, etc.

The systems consists of a computer, a microphon, a headphone, an audio interface, pressuresensitive waddings for the shoes and gloves with photosensitive sensors. A Basic_Stamp and a MIDI interface are used as connection between sensors and computer.

The protagonist is wearing the gloves and the pressuresensitive waddings in his shoes. He carries the computer and the rest of the system in a backpack. The microphon detects the highfrequent sinusoids, that are emitted by the loudspeakers. The computer programm coded in Max/Msp is looking for the sinusoid with the highest amplitude. This is done by a FFT filter. So we can determine the zone in wich the protagonist is moving.

Dependant on its position the protagonist walks through different worlds of sound. The waddings are triggering sounds of steps and the gloves are modulating some of the sounds.